... all our memory was stored in external discs?

I am not going to ask you to imagine what would be the world like if we had no memory… but just try to think how things could change if all the memory we have was stored in external disks...

The technological revolution already reduced a lot our memory skills and capability: we keep in mind less and less things because we can rely on technological devices, so telephone numbers, addresses, dates, verses, conversations are all saved in external devices from where it is possible to glean whenever we want to. But what would happen if all our memory was stored in an external place and not only numbers but also colors, smells, landscapes, thoughts, opinions, faces and everything that we can possibly keep in our mind was no longer part of us but stored in a device physically detached from us that we could connect to our brain whenever we wanted to?

After the first moments of “enjoying the present” without remembering absolutely anything, neither the good nor the bad things of the past, probably everyone would realize how memory was important to us and we would start carrying around this “memory device” everywhere, at home, in the streets, in the working place, at the cinema and even in the bathroom, because let’s admit it: this is the place where usually we have the most constructive thoughts of the day!
We would also start to value our memories very much because, as you know, external disks have a limited amount of space and the choice of what to keep and what to loose would have to be very careful and carried out both by a logical and by an emotional perspective. Moreover, there would be always the risk of loosing everything, due to a potential damage of the disk or due a theft. Of course there would be also someone who would start exchanging or selling these external disks in order to make it possible to experience in our minds things that we never actually lived on our own skin.

Fortunately, although we are no longer used to learn by heart long poems (or…), we still have in our brain a little but stretchable space available for memories, a place where we remember, we forget, we keep for ourselves or we share what we or our subconscious considers as valuable or not... so let’s keep that space active and let’s keep using external memory disks just for pictures!

Have a good day, and if it's good, I hope you will remember about it!